Monday, March 07, 2022



Nadia Bokody: Why married women stop having sex

As a Lesbian. Ms Bokody is not in the best position to talk about this and her comments are simplistic. She says that bearing a big load of housework suppresses the desire for sex in women.

It is true that libido drops off for both men and women in the course of a long relationship but I not aware that the effect is stronger for women. From many discussions I have had with women, I get the impression that women stay interested for longer.

And I think it is fair to say that all relationships are
sui generis. They all involve an explicit or implicit "deal" between the partners. If the wife is satisfied with the relationship that is all that matters. To outsiders a particular set of arrangements may seem unfair but the outsiders are unlikely to know all details of how a couple relate to one-another. If the wife sees the arrangements as unfair there is a problem. But it is for the woman concerned to say that something is unsatisfactory, not outsiders.

Often the role of the male may not be immediately obvious. That the man is on standby to "fix" household devices when they go wrong may not always be immediately visible.

At the risk of lapsing into triviality, the classic situation where a jar with a tightly-fitting lid is handed to the man to open is very well known. And the service provide by the man does not have to be that trivial. In my own case I recently had to deal with two household devices that had ceased to function. My girlfriend identified the problems and promptly handed the devices to me. It took me quite a lot of thinking and fiddling to dismantle the two devices, remove the problem and then mantle them again. The mantling can be the hardest part.

And all the while my girlfriend concentrated on food preparation and cleaning. So was that unfair? Judging by the affection that she later lavished on me, she clearly did not think so. But our relationship is of course
sui generis. What works for us may not work for all. All couples have their own explicit or implicit arrangements and understandings. It is not for outsiders to judge them. Matthew 7:1-3.


Every time I think I’ve written the last column I’m going to write about this, the bar for the men who partner with them sinks to an abysmal new low.

Take the TikTok trend captioned, “Things that turn me on as a mum”, in which montages of men performing painfully simple tasks like folding clothes, cooking dinner, and putting nappies on their own babies are synched to a sexy soundtrack and juxtaposed with footage of their eager-eyed wives watching on, barely able to contain their arousal.

The comments sections of these videos are almost as disturbing as the clips themselves – an orgy of women positively charged with erotic excitement collectively exclaim, “#DaddyGoals!” and “Where can I find myself a hubby like that?!!”, punctuating their enthusiasm with heart eye emojis.

You could be forgiven for thinking this was satire – that it mimics the same kind of hyperbolic praise you’d expect a child to receive from a parent after completing their homework – but poking fun of men’s limited participation in housework has become a depressing kind of signature for women on the internet in 2022.

Of course, we aren’t taught to be nonchalant about men’s scant contributions to domestic labour.

We’re conditioned to believe the mere act of being chosen by a man is in and of itself the highest form of acknowledgment of our existence. That, securing a man for marriage is so covetable, it nullifies any self-sacrifice or degradation a woman may have to endure as part of being able to call herself a wife.

Sure, your husband almost never puts the toilet seat down and still thinks it’s cute to leave a halo of his soiled undies on the floor around the laundry basket, however – YOU HAVE A HUSBAND! So what if you have to mother him every so often?

It’s not like he doesn’t care. He’d truly LOVE to help you out with the groceries. But he’s just a man … How is he supposed to know what brand of milk to get, or navigate the complex task of determining the appropriate Tupperware container to stow the couscous away in when he gets home with everything??

I mean, like, he COULD clean the bathroom, but he’s just not as well versed as you are on the sophisticated mechanics of swirling a brush around a toilet bowl and wiping Windex across reflective surfaces. You know you’ll just have to redo it anyway.

Never send a man to do a woman’s job! Amirite, ladies??!

This infantilisation of men isn’t by accident, and it’s certainly not because women get off on mothering their grown adult spouses. It’s the result of wilful, learned behaviour – something some psychologists are now referring to as “weaponised incompetence”.

Originally coined “strategic incompetence” in a 2007 Wall Street Journal article, weaponised incompetence is the act of feigning an inability to understand or complete a task (though it can also include doing the task but deliberately carrying it out poorly), so as never to be asked to do it again.

And it’s so prevalent, the most recent Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (Hilda) survey found that, on average, women do 21 hours additional unpaid labour each week than men.

This was true even when the woman was the breadwinner in the couple, so the old “but he works really hard to bring home the bacon” trope isn’t actually accurate. (This is not even to mention the emotionally, mentally, and physically intensive labour stay-at-home mums carry out in the home that’s still ignorantly deemed “not actual work”.)

The survey, which was conducted in 2019, revealed this gendered gap is most pronounced in heterosexual couples with dependent children, and that the biggest form of unpaid work was housework, closely followed by child-rearing.

EPILOGUE:

I can't resist the temptation to add another anecdote about the male role:

Many years ago, I was sharing an apartment with two lively ladies. They concluded that there was something wrong with the deadlock on their front door and decided to fix it themselves. They took it off the door and opened it up. It promptly went SPROINNGG, as devices using springs tend to do, and scattered its parts around. They just sat there in dismay looking at the disaster.

They did not even look at me. They assumed that as an academic I would be useless at practical things. So I gathered up the parts, mantled the lock correctly and handed it back to them for attachment to the door. They did so very quietly. I later married one of the ladies concerned so I think it can be assumed that my standby services were appreciated. They were not to know that locks have been a minor hobby of mine since childhood. I still fix them.

Years later, when I fixed the lock on another lady's door, she commented: "I didn't think you could do that". She and I ended up having a four-year relationship. She was pretty too.

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Amy Schumer says son Gene, two, will 'most likely have autism'

Amy Schumer shared that she is 'not hoping either way' when it comes to her son Gene David Fischer, two, being diagnosed with autism like his father and her husband, Chris Fischer.

The stand-up comedian, 40, appeared on a new episode of Chelsea Handler's podcast Dear Chelsea, where she spoke candidly about her feelings, revealing she 'doesn't have a preference' when it comes to his diagnosis.

'I think the statistics are pretty strong toward he will most likely have autism,' she told Handler. 'Parents have different journeys with this. Having a child with severe autism is beyond my imagination difficult,' the Emmy-winning star said.

She went on, 'But if Gene does wind up having ASD, I'm not looking for the signs in a way that are upsetting, I'm not hoping either way.'

In her 2019 Netflix special Growing, the New York native revealed that her James Beard Award winning husband, 42, was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder as an adult. 'Most of my favorite people are on the spectrum,' the Trainwreck actress added.

As for an official diagnosis, Schumer said that will have to wait until her son is older. 'He's two and a half and I think they don't diagnose children until maybe six at the earliest I think. You can see some signs but the diagnosis doesn't come until later and I can say honestly I don't have a preference either way,' she said. She then added that his happiness is all that matters. 'You just want your kids to be healthy and happy.'

After sharing Fischer's diagnosis in her documentary, an Instagram follower asked Schumer how she 'cope[d] with the possibility' that their child will be on the spectrum. 'How I cope? I don’t see being on the spectrum as a negative thing,' she replied.

Schumer continued: 'My husband is my favorite person I’ve ever met. He’s kind, hilarious, interesting and talented, and I admire him. Am I supposed to hope my son isn’t like that?' the star asked.

'I will pay attention and try to provide him with the tools he needs to overcome whatever challenges come up like all parents. I’d be disappointed if he liked the Big Bang Theory and NASCAR, not if he has ASD.' Schumer gave birth to her son in May 2019, one year after her wedding to the American chef.

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Three BLM Hate Hoaxers Who Tried to Frame Proud Boys and Trump Supporters have Been Convicted of Arson and Vandalism

Three BLM members tried to frame the Proud Boys and Trump supporters in a three-day crime spree in which they left notes using the language of the Proud Boys.

The three broke out windows and otherwise vandalized, police vehicles, including attempting to torch them. The three men have been identified as John Wesley Wade, 35, Ellie Melvin Brett, 37, and Vida Jones, 19. They were originally arrested in Oct. 2020 following a three-day spree of vandalism.

Interestingly, one of the three men, John Wesley Wade, was out on bond at the time of the vandalism. He had helped torch the Wendy’d during the riots in Atlanta. Police were able to place him at the scenes of the vandalizing thanks to his ankle monitor.

Two of the defendants pleaded guilty and the third was convicted and was sentenced to five years in prison. The other two are awaiting sentencing.

The crime spree began on Sept. 30, 2020, at a Walmart on the west side of Atlanta. One of the men smashed the window of a police vehicle.

A note was left that claimed the election was stolen. The note was left in an effort to shift the blame to Trump supporters. They later damaged a second police vehicle.

The next night, the trio expanded their crimes to arson after they began with a Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) police car that was parked at a train station. They then vandalized five postal vehicles at a USPS location, including setting them on fire.

From PJ Media

In the south Atlanta suburb of East Point, the men set fire to two public works vehicles. Law enforcement found a note attached to a brick in one of the vehicles.

“The note stated ‘*STOP the FAITHLESS ELECTOR vote in the WHITE HOUSE…and the FAITHLESS CHRISTMAS in the WHITE HOUSE;’ cited several Bible verses, but misspelled Jeremiah as “Jerimiah;” and included the Instagram handle, ‘@NoFaithLessElector,’ associated with Brett,” reported Cathell.

The three men filmed each act of arson and posted them on social media. On Oct. 4, an Instagram account reportedly associated with Jones posted footage of fire and police response to the East Point fires with the caption, Where’s the media coverage?”

A Twitter post from a now-suspended account from The Base, an Antifa group out of New York City, referred to the three as “comrades.”

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How my career as an author was cancelled by the woke warriors who have taken over publishing

GILLIAN PHILIP

Once upon a time, in a halcyon era that now seems like a distant golden age, writing books was a creative endeavour; a job in which you let your imagination take flight.

Various points of view were allowed to flourish. Stories were peopled by both heroes and villains. The offensive, the reprehensible, even the downright evil, coexisted with the noble and good.

Fiction was as multi-faceted as the world we live in, and writing was a realm of free expression in which authors had licence to provoke thought, illuminate discussion, even — dare I say it — voice unfashionable opinions without fear of being pilloried and 'cancelled'.

White authors such as Alexander McCall Smith could invent black characters, as he did in his wildly successful, Botswana-based The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, without being accused of 'cultural appropriation'.

Thomas Harris could conjure from his fertile mind the grotesque Dr Hannibal Lecter in The Silence Of The Lambs without being accused of celebrating cannibalism. And he could invent the chilling serial killer Buffalo Bill — who murdered and skinned overweight females to make a 'woman suit' out of their skin — without being cancelled for transphobia.

In that not-so-distant past JK Rowling could have freely expressed a belief that a biological male, with a man's body and genitalia, could not become a woman simply because he felt like one.

Today all that has changed. Our freedom to think expansively and creatively, even to express our own views, is being undermined as surely as it would be in a totalitarian state. Books are literally being pulped if their authors refuse to toe the line. It is as if the Communist Red Guard has taken over.

And some of us, myself among them, who have challenged the prevailing orthodoxy on anything from transgender issues to race have been summarily dropped by our publishers.

Chilling isn't it? The change has crept up on us insidiously. Today we live in a dystopian world where writers are cowed, terrified of causing offence.

Before we even put fingers to keyboard we are thinking about the all-powerful lobby of censors who might construe something we have written as objectionable.

I know this because I am a writer — or, more specifically, was one — who fell prey to publishing's 'woke' agenda when, two years ago, I offered my support to JK Rowling on Twitter, for the stand she had taken against transgender people being allowed to identify as male or female at will.

I shared her concern that there should be checks on potential predators who might take advantage of the relaxed rules.

I added the hashtag #IStandWithJKRowling to my Twitter handle in response to the author's essay, in which she revealed that she was a domestic abuse survivor and argued that letting any self-identifying trans woman into single-sex spaces without appropriate checks could present a danger to females.

The hue and cry this provoked was unimaginable. I was subjected to a torrent of abuse on social media. Like Rowling, even though I am not remotely transphobic, I was called everything from a 'transphobe' to 'a piece of s***'.

I was labelled a 'Terf' (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist, the derogatory term used by transgender activists for the women they believe don't back their cause).

My successful career as an author — one of a team writing animal fantasy novels for children between eight and 12 under the name Erin Hunter — was obliterated overnight.

The company I worked for, Working Partners — a book packager that sells concepts and series to different publishers — issued a pious email to all those who had complained to the firm about me.

'The worlds created by Erin Hunter are meant to be inclusive for all readers and we want to let you know that Gillian Philip will no longer be writing any Erin Hunter novels,' they wrote to the anonymous trolls who had sent me death threats.

My career was literally cancelled. Although the job was one I loved — I had won awards and made eight promotional tours of America, where the Erin Hunter series is huge — I have felt too traumatised to begin writing another novel since.

My husband Ian had died a month before I was dropped by my publishers, in May 2020, leaving me a widow with two teenage children. The firm sent flowers and a note of condolence. Weeks later they were ruthlessly ending my job. The combination of grief and stress almost floored me.

Yet the 'woke' brigade who cancelled me often use the hashtag: 'Be kind'. It seems to me that their humanity is selective. Only those they consider deserving of it are offered compassion, which tells us just how morally bankrupt they really are.

I now work as an HGV driver, a job I find more congenial — actually more intellectually liberating —because my workmates do not mind what opinions I have and are happy to discuss them with me.

They are also much less misogynistic than I have found the publishing industry to be.

It is ironic, too, that the cadre of self-appointed censors in the book world, who feel it is their role to defend every minority group from the tiniest slight, is largely white, privileged and middle class.

These self-appointed ethical guardians have appropriated and warped a term, 'woke', that was originally coined by black African Americans to describe people who are awake to racism and prejudice.

But, of course, the publishing zealots are blind to such anomalies: 'cultural appropriation' is not a transgression that applies to them.

They take their order from bloggers, social media users — no matter how venomous and unhinged — and the growing army of 'sensitivity readers' who are employed to scrutinise every pre-publication text for even the most minor infractions.

So ludicrously inflated has the role of these scrutineers become that whole teams are employed to pore over proofs. The results can be farcical: what is praiseworthy to some readers offends others.

And it's not only professional readers that can derail your career. The critically acclaimed author and former teacher Kate Clanchy was forced to part company with her publisher Pan Macmillan earlier this year after her Orwell Prize-winning memoir Some Kids I Taught And What They Taught Me, was subjected to a trashing from Goodreads, a forum in which readers review and give star ratings to books.

Clanchy was criticised for using 'racist tropes' in her description of pupils as having 'chocolate-coloured skin' or 'almond eyes'.

One sensitive reader objected to Clanchy's use of 'disfigure' to describe the effects of spoil heaps on a landscape; another quibbled that she should not use 'handicap' in its ordinary sense of impede.

Despite Clanchy's former pupils springing to her defence, and endorsements on her book's dust jacket praising its 'inclusiveness' and 'humanity', she and her publisher parted 'by mutual consent'. Last month, she acquired a new publisher, Swift Press, which is to reissue her book, with amendments.

In a more benign era we authors used to joke about Goodreads. We'd urge each other not to look at it because it was damaging to the ego to read a one-star review.

There was even a Twitter account (@dontgoodreads) dedicated to the thought. But that is as far as our concerns reached. How extraordinary then that today Goodreads reviewers have such a stranglehold over publishers that they have the power to destroy established writers who do not conform to 'woke' views.

Many modern authors would mock the Victorians' attitude to children's literature, which decreed that stories should be morality tales encouraging good citizenship and reinforcing the accepted ethics of the day.

Yet the 'woke' lobbyists are doing just that — encouraging didactic preachiness at the expense of free imagination and empathy.

It is as if we can't trust children to have their own moral compass any more: their thoughts have to be directed and channelled in an approved way.

Publishing has become censorious, nannying, overbearing. Authors' consciences — or even those of their editors — are no longer trusted.

And the young adult side of the industry has capitulated to the tyranny completely.

The stifling outsourcing to sensitivity readers; the indignation of the fresh-faced, privileged and entitled juniors of the publishing world who insist that every email is signed off with their favoured personal pronouns: all of it is deeply concerning.

I try to make light of it by adopting 'hi/vis' as my personal pronouns on my Twitter page. It's my joke, because I now wear a luminous yellow jacket for work. I hope I infuriate the publishing interns, the bloggers and the Twitterati who take these matters so seriously.

But we have reason to be afraid for the publishing industry, because it's destroying itself. Many senior people know there's a problem, but they are too scared to address it.

I expect that the only way I will write again is if I self-publish — a route once derided as the last resort of amateurs, but is now quite possibly the only outlet for honest, direct and emotional writing.

I could list dozens of examples of privileged, white, middle-class writers who bully other writers into changing their work to suit their own prejudices.

Such a clique has driven my friend, the children's author Rachel Rooney, out of publishing.

Rachel is an autistic author who is devoted to child development and safeguarding, and her writing was critically celebrated.

Yet a bullying campaign by other children's writers forced her to stop writing.

Rachel's delightful picture book My Body Is Me was labelled 'transphobic', simply because it celebrated the fact that no child's body is 'wrong'.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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